ChessUnlock

Problem: I was stuck around 1100 elo at chess for too long. I knew the part of the answer was to do more puzzles but I could never stay consistent. It's not even about lack of motivation or discipline, I'd straight up forget about it for a while or just be too busy to stay active.

Solution: I built an app to remove the decision: every time I wake my Mac, a fullscreen puzzle appears and I have to solve it to reach my desktop. Five days in, I'd done 41 puzzles. Testing with a friend for a month now, we both feel a (slight) improvement through pattern recognition simply from this passive drill.

Privacy:

• Fully local. No server calls, puzzles bundled in the app from 5M+ Lichess database.
• No account, no signup, no email, no tracking.
• App doesn't see or transmit anything (logs are local in a txt file that you can choose to send when reporting an issue).

Comparison:

• Lichess and chess.com puzzle pages: closest since puzzles, but I have yet to see any similar implementation stacking a habit on computer unlock.
• Browser extensions that gate sites until you solve a puzzle: only work in the browser. ChessUnlock catches you at the OS level (and fully local).

Pricing:

• Free 7-day trial, full features, no card, no signup.
• $6.99 lifetime after that. Unlimited devices, free lifetime updates.

macOS 14+. Notarized by Apple. Menu bar app, no dock icon.